6.1 R
ESPONSE TOR
ESEARCHQ
UESTIONS Research questionPhase 1
Research question Phase 2
Research question Phase 3 How the qualities that enhance
liveability at the urban district’s scale can be defined for a local context?
How can these qualities be evaluated to understand liveability performance in urban districts?
How liveable are urban districts planned under sustainability premises?
How the qualities that enhance liveability at the urban district’s scale can be defined for a local context?
There were reviewed city survey reports that show the understanding of citizens concept of liveability and green building certification schemes that present what is evaluated on social sustainability in the plan and design of urban-scale projects. Reviewing the literature allowed to explore different methodologies on how to assess social aspects of life in cities. Altogether, permitted to design a process on creating local context “liveability principles”. As suggested by this research project, this process to define “Local Liveability” require understanding what people’s needs and wants in their urban daily life, and to investigate existing metrics for evaluation that address those areas with a sustainability approach. To summarize, the “liveability principles” are the qualities of the built environment that enhance liveability at the local level. These integrate seven categories on what people relate to a liveable place. The 21 parameters identified, which are the resident’s demands, can be shaped by the built environment and can be measured with a great sustainable approach. The content of these categories and parameters are related to the local area, which means that relevance could vary to another context. However, the methodology to determine the categories and parameters for liveability at the local level could present great replicability opportunity.
As stated before, this research suggests that the qualities that enhance liveability can be defined firstly, by the local residents themselves by surveying people’s needs and wants. Secondly, by investigating existing metrics for evaluation that address those areas with a sustainability approach, as it is the case of the green building certifications that have already embedded in their schemes the resulting topics from the survey. Thirdly, to combine the first two with an analysis of what has already done in the built environment. Lastly, to interlink the similar parameters among the three. The interlink of concept, measurement and practice can result in a list of feasible to impact, to measure
63 and to build qualities that can enhance liveability. The next subsection will elaborate on the process of designing the Liveability indicators framework.
How can these qualities be evaluated to understand liveability performance in urban districts?
This research recommends a holistic approach to evaluate liveability performance, by the interlink of the three-areas of evaluation. The three-areas of evaluation are the systems performance throughout the years, the built environment or layout change during its use, and the peoples experience, their behavior and satisfaction level on the place. Altogether, provide a systemic approach that correlates different data means that are typically analysed separately. This research presents a sample of seven indicators designed in the topic area of seven parameters defined in phase one. These seven indicators combined three-areas of evaluation, different data inputs and result in an average liveability index.
How liveable are urban districts planned under sustainability premises?
The resulting liveability index value for this case study indicates a great correlation of the sustainability practices certified by green building certification systems and this liveability framework.
The high correlation of liveability and sustainability is also due to the fact that the indicator’s measurement criteria relies mainly on the green building certifications extrapolation of the calculations applied to the plan and design practices, to the operational way of measuring them. All in all, it can be said that the urban districts planned under sustainability premises are liveable.
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6.2 K
EY KNOWLEDGE OBTAINEDAs introduced in the literature review, it is only through post-occupancy evaluations on any type that impact measurement can be done. It is a fact that certifications validate the project’s approach and on paper strategies, but a continuous evaluation allows us to understand if the standards and goals are being met. POE, as presented, has different levels of evaluation. By assessing this project with this three-area evaluation approach, it has been learned that POE relying on individual systems or merely on experience, doesn’t provide a full picture or the integration of what is built, how it performs over the years and how people experience it.
Importance of the Urban Districts scale
A POE at the Urban Districts scale could assist in improving everyday urban life by continuously enhancing the natural and built environment. As urban scale projects take many years to be developed, doing a POE in an early stage of an urban district development assists in understanding not only performance but in improving qualities that will be built throughout the future development phases. In existing districts, it could allow continuous improvement and the possibility to tackle directly areas that need change.
Understanding the performance at the district level allows us to identify which are the interactions between household and city scales. Therefore, it is mainly at the district level that city actions can be directly taken. Before being part of a large community and city, we belong to smaller communities as neighbours, co-workers, local users of facilities or members of groups. If the neighbourhood performance is good, there is very likely that the city will be impacted by it.
POE tool for liveability in Urban Districts
The created POE with a holistic approach allows us to understand how the different systems perform and interact. The evaluation tool generated can serve as performance evaluation that enables either operations or future planning and design improvements in both new construction and existing one.
As a tool, it can assist in decision-making strategies for improvement in the spaces between buildings for optimal people-centric urban design. After concluding this research, it can be said that it is possible to evaluate the qualities for the liveability of the space in between buildings at the urban district scale. However, evaluating the urban district scale and not building o city scale can be challenging on where to define the boundaries for the metrics of evaluation, as some qualities of the household, neighbourhood and city scale can be overlapped. For example, when conducting the surveys, having the option to find residents and people that work in the area, which experience the everyday life qualities of the districts; or also, to consider frequent visitors. Thus, it was key to identify what can be measured for the space between buildings that is not already measured at the household level, and that can provide more specific and detailed values than the city scale. An example of it is the understanding of the microclimate, affecting by its direct surroundings, and varying at the city scale due to the different conditions on the different district areas. Also, to learn not only about
65 satisfaction but about preferences and behaviour can allow us to understand more in-depth about the lifestyles and possibly shape them towards sustainable ones.
Usability of a POE for urban districts
At the urban districts scale interventions, there are several stakeholders involved throughout the development stages. For this reason, it considered that even if the results could be useful for all of the stakeholders’ activities, there could be some groups with a particular interest in it. For instance, the tool could assist municipalities in assessing in a detailed level how the different city areas perform, with their diverse natural and built qualities, uses and users. With this, particular strategies, renovations or allocation of resources could be distributed differently. Also, it was identified in the case study that the project owner conducts POE evaluations with the purposes of reporting and improvement. All of them rely in different assessment methodologies and approach. So, another example of the tool usability could be as the project owner KPIs-Key performance indicators for the different project interventions they have. This could result in a unified, structured evaluation mean that can be replicable to different districts. It is a fact that many spaces in between buildings are being renovated nowadays with a more people-centric approach and these interventions are planned and designed by local firms. Therefore, the tool could also serve to identify continuous improvement for planning and design firms solutions. On all of the examples, data collections or access would be determinant on the quality of the assessment.
Validity, reliability and scalabiltiy
The calculation means are robust, as they are based on existing measurements within the certifications and other criterions reviewed in the literature, but not designed by the author of this research project. However, the index values for assigning a grade were designed by the author of this master thesis, considering the standard of the certification scheme as the target value for highly liveable places and providing variation in grade depending on how close or far the project number results in comparison to the reference value.
The methodology pursued to design this tool is easy to adapt for a tool creation in other contexts.
The tool itself can be adapted to different contexts’ realities, as the category areas, even if defined at the local context, represent values for liveability that are applicable for international contexts. The relevance of some indicator’s topic may vary depending on the local conditions. For example, the climate change mitigation category contains parameters related to different events. In the local context, wind experience and flooding represent the topic areas that are more relevant for climate events. Nonetheless, in areas on which other types of events are more common, such as earthquakes, more considerable attention could be put to design evaluation means for it. That is why it is recommended on this research to first design principles at the local scale and then design the means to evaluate them, as what makes a place liveable is not the same for a different context. The calculations contained within each indicator can also be easily measured in the same way in other sites, as the reference index values rely mainly on the city and national comparisons.
Barriers into opportunities
66 The limitation on the tool usability can be the data availability to evaluate the urban districts, as many of the sources need to be statistics, and sometimes there is no publicly available data for it. But as it is through observation, data collection and analysis that improvements can be made, this could represent the opportunity to shape more emphasis on at district scale statistical analysis.
The urban scale interventions, such as new districts development or renovation of existing urban areas, present the great challenge of aligning different stakeholder’s interests. A great example of it is the sustainability practices in the local context. The DGNB certification first adaption to the local market – Denmark, was released in 2012. So far, it has been a continuous dialogue among stakeholders to come up with speaking the same language of sustainability. The progress by now is that the certification is widely accepted in the construction market, as is perceived now as a standard of sustainability and not as a distinction label. The same way, Liveability concept could be directly linked to all construction practices and could directly result in efficiency or improvements. For instance, the fact that a place that is attractive and convenient to bike through will make more people jump into a bike and change their mobility behaviour. This transition could directly relate to reduced emissions, lower construction operation and maintenance of road infrastructure and healthier lifestyles. As experienced with this POE framework designed for Liveability, the term goes beyond social areas and relates to sustainability spheres. This enables the great opportunity to generate POE as integrative systems, on which for example all resources flow impact, infrastructure development can be understood of the improvement on the quality of life and not only on efficiency or waste reduction.
6.3 F
UTURE STUDIESFor tool improvements, further comparison among certified projects could be made to come up with a more representative response to the third research question, in the topic of assessing the correlation of liveability in urban districts planned under sustainability premises. Another option is to generate a tool that creates indicators for all the parameters and not only a sample of them. The seven indicators are a sample of the creation and use of the tool for liveability, but do not provide the full assessment of what liveability is.
The analysis made relied mainly upon excel calculations that put together all the data inputs from the three-areas of evaluation. There is the potential to link these measurements into a GIS tool, smart meters or machine learning, that allows to automate and integrate the calculation of these indicators.
Since liveability is a fairly new concept, the liveability impact could be further studied and understood as an SROI- social return of investment, as a way to capture and express in monetary value the liveability practice.
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